Labor Day is over and the shore season is over. Over the last several weeks of this summer I took my family to the shore. I love the shore. As a kid, I went to the NJ shore every summer with my family and I want to carry on the tradition with my children. When I was a kid I do not remember seeing garbage on the beach. I do not remember, at least until I was older, medical waste washing up on the beach. When I was a child, I do not ever remember having a condom float by me as I swam in the ocean. That is exactly what I saw a couple of weeks ago.
My children are not so lucky. And that is a shame. Over the Labor Day weekend, my kids picked up several pieces of garbage that had either been left on the beach by thoughtless people or had washed upon from the ocean. To my pride they put the garbage in the garbage where it belonged. This is what they and I saw as we took a short walk one evening (excuse the photography).
Around the same time I was looking at the garbage on the beach, 24 syringes washed up on the beaches of Long Beach Island over a few days period. A news article ,written by Michelle Lee of the Press of Atlantic City, reported that LBI’s health officer believed that the syringes were because of combined sewer overflows and bad surf.
People need to stop littering at the beach and off their boats. Government needs to upgrade combined sewer overflows that that garbage cannot be washed out to see. Government needs to enforce the litter laws and anti-dumping laws.
Our coastal environment is too important to treat it as a place to dump our garbage. It is too important to our economy. It is too important to a tradition that my and many families in New Jersey have. I do not want to ever have to explain to my child why a condom is floating past them in the ocean or that they have to watch were they walk on the beach so that they do not step on glass or syringes. I want them to see and enjoy the beauty of New Jersey’s shore.
